[Film Review] False Positive (2021)

American comedian and actress Ilana Glazer is best known as the co-creator of Broad City, a web series that grew into a popular American comedy series about the lives of two young women in New York City. Glazer's character was larger-than-life; she was always in motion, bubbling over with contagious energy and good cheer. As the star of this year's horror film False Positive, it's astounding to watch her as a much more subdued character whose vulnerability gives the story its heart. 

Glazer (who also co-wrote the movie with Alissa Nutting and John Lee) plays Lucy, a marketing executive whose career is blooming, and who is yearning to have a child. She's married to Adrian, a surgeon played by Justin Theroux. Rounding out the cast is Pierce Brosnan as Dr. Hindle. He's Adrian's mentor, and he's got a reputation as a trailblazing fertility doctor. Will he be the solution to the couple's woes?

Well, not quite. Lucy gets pregnant – or as Adrian irritatingly insists through the film, "they" get pregnant – but her encounters with the authoritative Dr. Hindle are tinged with an increasing sense of dread. As the movie follows Lucy through her pregnancy, she becomes more isolated as her due date approaches. Her relationships with both Adrian and Dr. Hindle grow fraught as False Positive hurtles towards its shocking conclusion. 

Unlike most films where women look completely nonchalant while getting a pelvic exam, False Positive doesn't shy away from the discomfort Lucy experiences; her face goes from neutral to uncomfortable to miserable in a matter of seconds. Every crank of the speculum is pronounced, making appointments with Dr. Hindle almost as excruciating for the viewer as it is for Lucy. 

Listening to Lucy's husband and her doctor pat themselves on the back for their surgical accomplishments while ignoring her as if she's little more than a lab specimen is like a gut punch. After her first pelvic exam, Dr. Hindle tells her, "Your architecture is great," which is a notably sterile way to refer to Lucy's body. Throughout history, the female body has been treated like an object – and this is especially true in the medical community. False Positive shines a light on this misogyny, even including a painful carousel of images showing pregnant women trussed up, contorted into horrible positions and under the influence of drugs that they may not have needed. 

The movie also portrays the subtle sexism that takes place in the workplace. Although Lucy is praised by her boss, there is an underlying seediness in his attitude towards her – he is a man who must place his hand on a woman's lower back, no matter what. In a move that's likely recognizable to every woman who has worked in a predominantly male setting, she must take on the group's secretarial tasks. The viewer can see Lucy's frustration grow each time her boss blithely drops a lunch order for their team on her desk. 

Lucy confides in her husband that she's always imagined what her daughter would be like. She tells Adrian, "I've always seen her, pictured us lying together in bed, staring at each other. And she would see through me with these clear eyes, right past me to some better version of myself." She even has a name picked out: Wendy. Allusions to Peter Pan abound throughout the story, and Lucy wrestles with her unofficial role as the responsible maternal figure in her office, just as Wendy became the de facto mother to Peter Pan and the Lost Boys. 

False Positive pays homage to films like Roman Polanski's iconic pregnancy horror film Rosemary's Baby and À l'intérieur, Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury's gut-wrenching French extremism movie about a pregnant woman under attack by a malicious stranger. Rather than being derivative, False Positive gives a studied and respectful nod to these films. Perhaps most notably, the isolation felt by expectant moms in these movies is prevalent here. In one memorable scene, Lucy hears a strange sound, and Adrian decides to investigate. While Lucy stays in a dimly lit room, Adrian disappears completely into the darkness, leaving her just as isolated as she is in Dr. Hindle's office. 

The fact that Lucy (like Rosemary before her) must put her trust in her domineering male doctor to get updates on what's happening in her very own body is chilling. Add this to the generally terrifying unknown that is pregnancy, and it's no wonder that Lucy becomes increasingly upset with the people in her orbit as she gets closer to that nine-month mark. False Positive effectively balances the horrors of insidious misogyny and the unpredictable mysteries of pregnancy.

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